The 10 co-signing MPs include the recently-lesser-spotted Charlie Elphicke and the-man-who-knows-the-offside-rule Damian Collins, yet nowhere in the letter are the cuts to bus services attributed to their own government’s strangulation of the Revenue Support Grant. Such a letter will undoubtedly lead to accusations of the signatories’ blind hypocrisy, as all the signing Tory MPs have consistently voted for the austerity measures that have led to such frontline services being cut in the first place.

It won’t be lost on the Kent public that only a few weeks ago, the very same Tory MPs that yesterday signed this letter to Mr Carter, welcomed in Phillip Hammond’s budget with the obligatory Commons whoops and smiles that have become commonplace on their benches in these years of austerity. To mix up a seasonal metaphor, the proof is in the Christmas pudding and if Kent Tories continue to back central government’s ongoing austerity measures, then is just a sad act of opportunistic penmanship of which they should be ashamed. The reason pensioners will be trapped at home and schoolchildren left standing waiting for a bus that will never come, is because their own government.